Blade 2

Director:

Guillermo del Toro

Writer:

David Goyer

New Line Cinema; R; 108 minutes

Release:

3/02

Cast:

Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Ron Perlman

Vampire aesthetics have, for several hundred years, been dominated by the wan, the wistfully romantic, and the consumptive. That was part of the pleasure in seeing Wesley Snipes kick vampire derriere in Blade. In the sequel Snipes returns as the title character, a half-human half-vampire who can survive sunlight. Blade is dedicated to the destruction of vampires, even though they share similar taste in paramilitary Eurotrash wardrobes.

Blade 2 delivers more darkly comic violence. (Comic in the sense of goofy, as well as referencing it's comic book origins). A superbreed of genetically enhanced bloodsuckers called Reapers are making life difficult for the Vampire Nation. The Nation enlists the help of their sworn enemy, Blade, to get these nasty Reapers off their collective backs. Blade ends up commanding a unit of elite fighter vampires who had once been trained to kill him, including a worst-of-all-possible-worlds racist undead skinhead (Ron Perlman). Somewhere under the gore lies a complex racial schematic but mostly it's just kung-fu vamp violence assisted by a cranked-up soundtrack. Snipes holds court with little character but immense screen presence, striding between silly and ultra-serious without breaking a sweat.